2 streets, 2 minds

Saturday

Oct 6, 2012 at 12:01 AMOct 6, 2012 at 9:56 AM

NEW PHILADELPHIA, Ohio - Just try to find Main Street in this eastern Ohio city of 17,300. "I know every street in town, and there isn't a Main Street in New Philly," said Mayor Michael R. Taylor. Even though there is no street named Main, that doesn't mean there isn't a main street. There are two, in fact - High and Broadway - and "one is not more main than the other," Taylor noted.

Joe Hallett, The Columbus Dispatch

NEW PHILADELPHIA, Ohio - Just try to find Main Street in this eastern Ohio city of 17,300.

"I know every street in town, and there isn't a Main Street in New Philly," said Mayor Michael R. Taylor.

Even though there is no street named Main, that doesn't mean there isn't a main street. There are two, in fact - High and Broadway - and "one is not more main than the other," Taylor noted.

The two streets intersect at the Tuscarawas County Courthouse on the public square, focal point for a still-viable but struggling downtown where almost every conversation begins and ends with the mighty Quakers football team and the high-school equivalent of the Ohio State-Michigan game looming against the hated twin-city rival.

"We've just got to beat Dover at the end of the year," Taylor said. "We don't give a damn about anything else."

After football, presidential politics dominates conversations on New Philly's main streets, a product of umpteen-million TV ads and the candidates visiting Ohio so much. With the election one month from today, the outcome could turn on voters' answers to the iconic 1980 Reagan vs. Carter question now at the heart of every presidential election with an incumbent on the ballot.

Are you better off than you were four years ago?

Puffing a cigar at a table outside the Daily Grind, where the local caffeine congress convenes most mornings, Jan Brindel, a 61-year-old former insurance agent, answered the question from mortal and economic points of view.

"I dropped over dead 10 years ago," Brindel said, grateful to have been resuscitated from a massive heart attack.

"But I haven't worked since then."

Brindel said he scrapes by on Social Security disability and commissions from some old insurance policies and is not better off.

"The gas prices are higher, and my cigars went from $3.79 to $7.19. I can either choose to eat or smoke my cigars, and I prefer my cigars more."

Interviews with a dozen voters on New Philly's main streets yielded a verdict of half saying they are better off, three saying they aren't, and three saying they're about the same. This seat of Tuscarawas County is a good place to take the voters' pulse, because the county has been a reliable bellwether in presidential elections. In the past six, it was one of only three of Ohio's 88 counties that correctly picked the three Democrats and three Republicans who won the state.

Four years ago in August, Tuscarawas County's unemployment rate was 6 percent. It shot up to 11.2 in August in 2009 and was back down to 6.2 percent this past August.

"I know for a fact that New Philly's doing better now," Mayor Taylor, a Democrat, said. "For example, our tax receipts have increased each year - in 2009, '10 and '11 - and so far in '12, we're ahead of last year."

Taylor credits the stable local economy on the city's diverse business base and believes President Barack Obama deserves credit for rescuing the national economy from falling into the abyss of depression.

"We're heading on the right path," he said.

Lowall Bower, 81, a retired chiropractor from Dover, rebutted that assessment as he headed into the courthouse to vote early. He always has voted a split ticket, he said, but this year he's going for Mitt Romney and voting a straight Republican ticket, saying Obama has failed to address the nation's crushing debt.

"I have 11 grandchildren, and I'm scared to death about what they're going to be walking into," Bower said. "It's going to be a very difficult world, a very uncertain world."

Tony Danzo, 64, a municipal planner, said his Individual Retirement Account has rebounded nicely since the Great Recession and he believes "the country is better off" under Obama. But his business is about the same, Danzo said, because of government cutbacks in funding for water and sewer facilities and housing revitalization programs.

"Our business is stable but could be better if there weren't so many cuts from Washington," Danzo said.

Shawn Clay, 35, of Dover, said he's better off because as a real-estate title examiner he is benefitting from the shale-oil boom in eastern Ohio, which "is creating a big job boom" in the region. And even though he supports Obama, he doesn't credit him for the improvement.

"I'm pretty realistic about it, and I don't think one guy in office is going to make that much of a difference than another guy in office."

At Rodriquez's House of Stones across from the courthouse, employees Bess Paternoster, 24, and Ian Wamboldt, 29, both from nearby Gnadenhutten, split on the question. Paternoster said she was living with her parents four years ago but now is married and better off. But she sees hardship for others almost daily at the jewelry store.

"We have a lot of people who are unemployed come in here just trying to sell stuff," she said.

Wamboldt, on the cusp of getting his master's degree in business, has racked up significant student loans, "and I can't find a job in my degree."

After casting his early ballot at the courthouse, Gregory Wallace, 52, a state employee, said he's "pretty much where I was before." He was a rare undecided voter, he said, until hearing Romney's comment that 47 percent of voters refuse to take responsibility for their lives.

"That really sealed the deal," Wallace said, noting that he voted for Obama "as the lesser of two evils."

Back at the Daily Grind, John Alexander, a 53-year-old factory worker from New Philadelphia, said he has not "lost any ground" over the last four years, but he hasn't gained any either. Obama, he said, hasn't kept his promises, so he'll vote for Romney, mainly because "I have a problem with career politicians, and he's somebody different."